John Smith

He punched his roommate in the throat, then watched cartoons and smoked a joint while she lay dying on the floor. Then he spent ten days cutting her up and boiling the flesh off her bones. A jury decided he wasn't responsible. Thirteen years later, another jury decided he wasn't dangerous anymore. That's him in the video, September 1989: "I realized, wow, I'm going to be going to prison now for murder." He never did. August 1989, the East Village. Daniel Rakowitz, 28, sold pot and walked around Tompkins Square Park with a rooster. He shared an apartment with Monika Beerle, a 26-year-old Swiss dancer, and she wanted him out. He told police he hit her in the throat, decided she was faking for 45 minutes, then left to make a pot delivery. When he came back, she was cold. He bought a saw at a hardware store and went to work in the bathtub. Then he started talking. He told people in the park what he'd done. A homeless man later testified he found a finger in the soup Rakowitz handed out there. Rakowitz led police to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, where he'd stored her skull. On tape he talked for over an hour, as calm as a man chatting with friends. At trial, all four psychiatrists, for both sides, called him a paranoid schizophrenic. The jury deliberated for nine days. On February 22, 1991, it found him not responsible by reason of mental disease, and he was sent to Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island. Court TV told viewers he wouldn't "get off that easily." Inside, he never agreed to take psychiatric medication. In 2004 his lawyer told a court he'd gone 13 years without a fight and once stepped in when another patient attacked a staff member. Kirby's own director of psychiatry testified that when Rakowitz talked about the killing, he smiled and spoke excitedly. The jury found him mentally ill but no longer dangerous. In 2005 a judge ruled the jury had no authority to make that call and kept him locked up. He kept asking to be moved somewhere softer. In 2010 a court said no again. Through his lawyer he now denies killing her at all and says other people did it while he was in the room. He's 65. As of the last reports, he's still on Wards Island. Ten days with a saw. Nine days of deliberation. Thirty-seven years and counting. He was scared of prison. Did the hospital save him from it, or give him a life sentence nobody had the nerve to call one?